On November 6, 2002 -- one day after the mid-term congressional
elections -- we issued our initial projections in more than 350 races
for elections in November 2004. We used the same methodology that had a
99.9% accuracy rate in projecting winners in more than 1,200 races from
1996-2002. In March 2004, we updated these projections, based on the
following factors: newly open seats (where an incumbent would not be
running for re-election); Texas congressional district line changes;
and updated data on 2000 presidential results by congressional district
(in 2002 we had made estimates in 50 districts for which this data had
not been available). Since then we have only made additional
changes based on newly-created open seats, party shifts (two Democratic
incumbents have changed parties) and special election results
(Democrats won two special elections). Our final number of
projected winners is 351.

The 2004 Monopoly Politics projections are now available in Excel
format. If you choose to view this file as an Excel workbook,
please right-click and save the file to your hard drive. If, in
Excel, you have difficulties using the spreadsheet, go to "Window" and
then "Unfreeze Panes" so you can scroll down the page. This
spreadsheet contains all the data used to make projections along with
the actual projection model and allows the users to modify a variety of
parameters to observe their impact on the accuracy of the projections.

The 2002 elections were strikingly uncompetitive:

2002 Election Results

Range

Number of races

Landslide wins (>=20% margin)

356

Comfortable wins (>=10)

41

Tight (<10% margin)

38

Total Races

435

Here
are our Monopoly Politics projections for 2002 and 2004 as of April 29,
2004. Without a major partisan surge for one party, expect the
2004 elections to be even less competitive. Also, note the increase
from 2002 to 2004 in the number of projected landslides victories.

2002 and 2004 Monopoly Politics Projections

Number of Projections

Range

2002

2004

Landslide (>=20% margin)

196

211

Comfortable (>=10)

101

107

Tight (<10% margin)

38

33

Total Projection

335

351

Competitive

83

70

Vulnerable

17

14

Total No Projection

100

84

We downloaded a map of the 2002 House election results from the New York Times website.

Finally, you can read a glossary of terms used in the Monopoly Politics 2004 projections, a User's Guide and a description of the algorithm used in the menu on the left.